With the Rainy River Walleye Tournament in the record books for another year, last Friday was a day of fishing just for the fun of it.
No pressure to catch the big basket, no worry about the tournament computers crashing. Just plain fun and something to sacrifice to the frying pan god.
Norm Hyatt offered me an afternoon on the Rainy River complete with a warm, sunny sky, a bagful of minnows, and a river full of hungry walleye. I literally tripped over myself getting out the door.
We dropped anchor just below the first set of rapids at the Long Sault, slipped a minnow on the jig, cast it out, and waited—for about a split-second.
Often before the jig had a chance to settle to the bottom, bang, you had a nice walleye.
Cast after cast netted the same result, and use of the landing net soon was disposed of as an escaped fish elicited only the comment “So what.”
How many did we catch? After a half-hour we lost count. Most of the fish were in the 14-16 inch range. Nice, fat walleye, just right for the frying pan.
The two biggest fish caught were a 19.5-incher at about three pounds and one at 23 inches plus that looked well over five pounds.
We let ’em go for someone else to enjoy the same thrill.
We pulled anchor around 4:30 p.m. and set off for home with a beautiful limit of frying pan delights. An immature bald eagle paced us wishfully looking for a handout, but he’ll have to catch his own.
Meanwhile, we treasured another memory of a great day of fall fishing on the beautiful Rainy River.
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